A Stark Contrast in Fishing Line : Berkley's Iron Silk

Total Score: 7.09 - GOOD

Introduction: What comes to your mind when you think of a "monofilament" fishing line? Usually, it's something clear, or even translucent if colored, correct? Well, Berkley Fishing's Ironsilk is marketed as a monofilament, but instead of being clear or translucent, it's 100% opaque - and a strange, kind of milky green color at that. Ironsilk won "Best Fishing Line" at the 2014 ICAST show, so we thought decided to take a closer look to see if it's as strong and smooth as its name suggests.

Quality : The first thing you notice with IronSilk when you take a length off of the spool and run it between your fingers is it is indeed very smooth and pretty consistent in shape. This is despite the fact the line is not precision wound onto the filler spool. In fact, it's wound on to the filler spool almost haphazardly.

IronSilk is an opaque monofilament from Berkley.

Taking the consistency factor more seriously, and measuring a several spots along this length with a micrometer we found our spool of 10lb test to have a diameter variance of only 0.71%. The average diameter of 10lb test IronSilk in our measurements came out to 0.291mm. The published diameter is 0.300mm. That's a variance we can live with!

A look at how the line sits on the filler spool.

Performance: Trying to get over the line's opaque characteristic is difficult, but I spooled it onto a couple of different reels to try and get a sense of its performance characteristics.

IronSilk comes off of casting and spinning gear really easily in both casting and pitching situations. It is surprisingly limp for a monofilament and very easy to manage. It might even resist twisting more than your average monofilament because of how limp it is, but I'm not 100% sure of that.

Spooled up on a Daiwa Revros Spinning reel and ready for some finesse fishing.

The downside with this good handling line is I didn't find it very sensitive at all. It seems better suited for reaction bite situations where sensitivity is not a key in detecting strikes. Knot strength tested out very well in our lab (87% of rated strength, 72% of tested strength), and those numbers held up out on the water in a couple of situations where I was certain the fish was going to break off.

Features: IronSilk is available in only one color - the afore mentioned milky green - and in a filler spool size of 300 yards. The spool upon which it is wound has no clips to help preserve the tag end of unused line, but it does ship with some tape over the spool that you can reuse if you're careful with it. There are no other bells or whistles with its packaging.

No frills packaging with Iron Silk, but this piece of tape can be reused to keep the tag end of unused line in check.

The so called secret with this line is in what Berkley refers to as a reinforced polymer construction and coating that gives the line its handling characters tics and resistance to abrasion.